Through the Ashes

Shalom Zahara, Please enjoy today's Daily Inspiration from Israel.

A psalm of Asaf. O Hashem, heathens have entered Your domain, defiled Your holy temple, and turned Yerushalayim into ruins.
מִזְמוֹר לְאָסָף אֱ‍לֹהִים בָּאוּ גוֹיִם בְּנַחֲלָתֶךָ טִמְּאוּ אֶת־הֵיכַל קָדְשֶׁךָ שָׂמוּ אֶת־יְרוּשָׁלַ ִם לְעִיִּים
Psalms 79:1 (The Israel Bible, p. 1567)
miz-MOR l'-a-SAF e-lo-HEEM BA-u go-YIM b'-na-kha-la-TE-kha ti-m'-U et hay-KHAL kod-SHE-kha SA-mu et y'-ru-sha-LA-im l'-i-YEEM
Through the Ashes
Picture this: A city, once pulsing with the vibrant heartbeat of a people, lying in ruins, its heartbeat silenced. This Picture this: a city, once pulsing with the vibrant heartbeat of a people, lying in ruins, its heartbeat silenced. This was the fate of Jerusalem when the Jewish Temples were destroyed - a catastrophe so profound that it found its place not once, but four times within the Hebrew Scriptures. It wasn't just a historical event; it was a cultural scar, a wound in the collective Jewish memory that still resonates through the ages.

As we delve into Psalm 79, we find ourselves confronting this sorrowful lamentation of a nation in the aftermath of King Nebuchadnezzar and his general, Nebuzaradan's devastation of Jerusalem. The destruction was profound and total - the Temple defaced and incinerated, the city laid to waste, countless lives abruptly extinguished, and those remaining, exiled. It was a day that seared itself into the Jewish consciousness, a day of mourning that echoes through time.

The psalmist paints a haunting picture in verse 2, capturing the extent of this brutal onslaught by the Chaldeans. The slain were left unburied, their bodies fodder for birds and beasts of prey - a stark reminder of the cruel and inhumane treatment the Jews faced at the hands of the Babylonians:

"Your servants' corpses were left as food for the birds of the sky, the flesh of Your devout ones to the beasts of the earth. Their blood flowed like water all around Jerusalem, and no one was left to bury them." Psalms 79:2-3
But the Pslam isn't all depressing.

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